


A Palace of Understanding

by Interjection



Series: the road not taken [4]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Tales Of The SMP, The InBetween - Freeform, Time Travel, time to unpack all the juicy lore from Karl
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-14 09:00:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29789538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Interjection/pseuds/Interjection
Summary: The Inbetween does strange things to Karl, and Karl does strange things to it in return.
Relationships: Alexis | Quackity/Karl Jacobs, Alexis | Quackity/Karl Jacobs/Sapnap, Karl Jacobs & The Inbetween, Karl Jacobs/Sapnap
Series: the road not taken [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2203440
Comments: 10
Kudos: 71





	A Palace of Understanding

At some point, death stopped becoming painful. The agony that twisted through the fabric of his existence, that left him with a flood of phantom panic and heaving shudders as he curled up on the library floor, crying for hours until a confused Sapnap or Quackity found him - that agony slowly disappeared.

Karl didn’t know why, despite how desperately he wanted to - but what he did know was that when the pain of death numbed to the point where he could slip on a mask of indifference immediately after each warp, the Inbetween made itself known to him. 

At first, the ivory columns were overwhelming - terrifying, even, if one had asked Karl back during that first bewildering trip, when each step felt like it would take him just a bit closer to sliding into a pit of eldritch unknowns, from which he could never return.

Over time, that sensation of overpowering impossibility - the walls too mirrored, the skies a gossamer all wrong, the intangibility of everything, even his own thoughts - what should be terrifying became the new accepted normal.

This was normal, Karl thought, swinging back and forth beneath the courtyard tree. The bark was birch and the leaves were the pale green of birch, but the tree was not birch. It was not even a tree, if Karl had to hazard a guess.

The force of the swinging caressed some part of his hair, shimmer curling in the light. But it was muted, silent - there was no wind in the Inbetween, just as there was no weather in general, and the concepts of time and space flouted their usual restrictions with an almost macabre glee. The Inbetween was - sentient? No, that wasn’t quite right, though it was close…

It was understanding, Karl decided. Not understanding in the way a parent would listen too and shoulder their child’s pain, or how lovers might nest against each other with whispered reassurances each night.

No, the Inbetween was understanding, but it understood on a level inimitable to mortals. It knew and it acknowledged, aware of the circumstances of it and Karl’s situation. And it continued its inner workings with just as much care as before. 

An understanding that Karl was its domain, perhaps. That Karl’s mind, soul, his ability to shred all semblance of a stable time signature - it belonged to the Inbetween, or whatever force that manifested itself as the dimension. 

But that was not to say the Inbetween did not have care, because it did. Karl knew this in the way it presented its book to him, slivers of hope for a puzzle impossible to piece together. At least, for now.

But he was so tired. The numbness has replaced the pain - the pain of travel, of death, of his soul ripped apart and tangled back together to the center this dimension. It was a feeling that left a dreaded, though empty feeling churning inside of him. 

He was getting used to the time travel, to his body destroyed and replaced back together in such a way - but he was losing himself as well.

The Inbetween promised a solution - that Karl could somehow piece himself back together. But it was never this easy, and the place had its own goals as well. 

Karl slipped off the swing, and chose a path of white to begin yet another walk. The stairs clicked smooth and mirrored beneath him. His eyes looked… dead, Karl noted, or perhaps the aura of death still clings to his pupils, slowly accumulating.

It would be fitting - everything was being stripped away from him. His life, his memories, his loved ones, the very color of his soul. His forced trips peeled back more and more layers each time the suffocating grip of  _ wrongness  _ squeezed his being through. 

Even back on the Dream SMP, that much had been obvious.

_ “Your colors are different,” Sapnap said. “Why’s your left sleeve yellow?” His lips pressed together, in a way so familiar in its message, but to Karl’s horror he can’t remember why. _

_ He shrugged instead, giving a soft smile.  _

_ “It’s nothing,” he lied. “Don’t worry about it.”  _

_ Because what was one more stir to muddle his memory further? If it could mask the questions, the pain, the bottomless chasm of loneliness that Karl would never wish upon anyone else? _

The white palace is as empty as ever, save for the occasional phantom of his image skipping through the halls. Those Karl wished to avoid, to no avail - they have provided no answers to him, only painful reminders. It was a useless effort to pursue them. 

Then again, maybe all of this was useless. As much as he wished for better timelines, better people, better  _ futures  _ \- it always led back here. With Karl’s decaying mind, the company of an incomprehensible dimension, and wisps of ghosts that never were. 

Whatever the Inbetween did, Karl had yet to figure out. What it wanted, he had no idea. It was a place with an understanding, a nebulous condensation of wills and wishes, and it had him at the center of its intrigue.

For now, he chose to believe its words - that there was a way to blockade the deterioration of his mind. That he should keep searching. That he should press on and explore its secrets, or whatever it allowed him to explore.

That it wanted peace for him.

But Karl was also not so naive as to believe that is all. His was a strange anomaly, as was the Inbetween - whatever secrets the place wanted him to discover, he was sure there were just as many it didn’t. 

But he had no choice. What else could he do?

He has combed the ivory palace again and again, and found nothing but more cryptic hints. It was clear that the answers lay… hidden. Out of sight. Perhaps deliberately, the Inbetween always so silent despite his pleas. It knew, it  _ understood -  _ but it continued its course of action. 

He sighed as another husk of himself, a lingering of something long gone and perhaps never existed, phased through his own gliding shape with not even a pause. Though functionally nothing more than mirages, the husks, on some level, terrified Karl even more than the Inbetween itself. 

What were they? Visions of his past and future selves? A representation of what he was doomed to be? 

And what was Karl? Why was he here? What was the Inbetween, really?

And…

Karl closed his eyes, feeling that familiar tug which signaled his forced return to the present timeline. 

He’s not sure he wanted to go back. Not when yet another blur would be applied across his already mangled, mirrored memories. 

But he had to. He had no choice. Just like with everything else, he had no choice. 

...just what was the Inbetween doing to him?

_ And what was he doing to it? _

**Author's Note:**

> Hey it's the Karl time traveling angst. Plot bunnies why.
> 
> I'll stream replying to comments, as well as discussing the Dream SMP, fanfiction, and whatever topics that come up (including questions) on Sundays 5pm EST! Follow my Twitch here: <https://www.twitch.tv/interjection_>
> 
> I just made a twitter! The is the first fic I’ve anonounced this one. Please interact, I am so lonely and our current circumstances haven’t helped. <https://twitter.com/lnterjection>  
> (lnterjection is spelled with a lowercase L, not I)
> 
> Oh and I have a Tumblr just because, do whatever with this info: <https://www.tumblr.com/blog/lnterjection>  
> (lnterjection is spelled with a lowercase L, not I)


End file.
